Amid WNBA controversy, this transgender athlete urges research over rhetoric

The debate over transgender women competing in elite women’s sports has descended into a full-blown political firestorm. The latest instigator was a now-viral interview by Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who told ESPN in a July 21 article that she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” The weeks that followed have been packed with political posturing, protests and provocative talk-show fodder, much of it aimed at dividing people much more than to actually support women’s sports. Amid the tension, a pair of former NBA players — Royce White and ex-Knicks center Enes Kanter Freedom — announced ulterior-motivated plans to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft, ridiculously claiming they identify as women. After a WNBA task force met Wednesday to discuss the situation, the league denounced any “bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.” Often lost in the controversy is how few transgender athletes are trying to compete in these leagues. In 2024, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel that he was aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes under his governance out of some 510,000 NCAA athletes. That’s fewer than 0.002%. There is no record of an openly transgender woman playing in the WNBA during the league’s 30-year history. Yet last year, President Trump signed an executive order designed to bar transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. The order instructed agencies to withdraw federal funding from schools that didn’t comply. The next day, the NCAA said it would restrict participation in women’s sports to those who were assigned female at birth. And this year, the International Olympic Committee announced a new policy, beginning with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, that allows only biological females, based on a one‑time SRY gene screening. Kirsti Miller, an Australia-based transgender athlete and researcher, wishes the conversation relied more on science than on politically charged rhetoric. “In Australia, we’ve had sporting bodies — probably around 40 different sporting bodies — develop policies for around 20-odd years,” Miller told the Daily News. Australia’s regulations, Miller said, require transgender athletes to undergo hormone-replacement therapy to block testosterone, and then to maintain those levels in order to compete. Doing so changes the athlete’s body and their physical-performance capabilities. “All of these elite-level sports, all the Olympic policies, they all had a minimum criteria that trans women had to meet prior to them even being considered to compete in the female category,” Miller said. “It wasn’t, ‘Walk up at the Olympics on Friday, saying, ‘My name’s Sarah,’ and let me compete in the Olympics tomorrow.’ Miller, 61, was a multi-sport athlete, including a champion swimmer, on the men’s circuit before she transitioned to female. She began taking hormone treatment in 1999. In 2013, Miller became the first transgender athlete to play in the women’s arm of the Australian Football League. Now retired from professional sports, Miller uses her platform to promote research. In 2023, she was part of a peer-reviewed study titled “The Impact of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy on Physical Performance” that was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. “It found that in trans women, they got an increase in fat mass of about 30% in the first 12 months. They got a decrease in muscle mass by around 9% in the first 12 months. They got a reduction in bone-mineral density, a reduction in strength,” Miller said. “Effectively, a trans woman does the opposite of an athlete that blood-dopes. Within three months, a trans woman has got less oxygen going to her heart, her limbs. She’s got less recovery. … The research has found, in endurance events, we’re performing worse than cisgender women.” In other words, the level playing field that the anti-trans contingent claims to want is already in place, in the form of gender-affirming hormone treatment. Sport-specific research is limited because, across the board, so few trans athletes have competed in elite women’s sports. Among the most notable are Renée Richards, who advanced to the women’s doubles final at the U.S. Open in 1977, and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who in 2021 became the first transgender woman to compete in a women’s event at the Olympics. Hubbard did not medal. But researchers believe the available studies can help them draw conclusions. A University of Melbourne article published by Miller’s colleagues states there is “no robust empirical evidence” that trans women increase the risk of injury to cisgender women when sharing the field. While a trans woman may have a height advantage, Miller says no sports league regulates height. “Blanket bans are not supported by the science, but also self-ID is not supported by the science, either,” Miller said. “We understand that going through the male puberty gives us the extra muscle mass, less fat mass and extra hemoglobin, and we understand the hormone treatment reduces all of that.” According to the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement, “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” The CBA does not, however, specify the league’s definition of a woman. Miller doesn’t expect a sudden rise in trans players in the WNBA, citing the challenges presented by hormone therapy — including a slower recovery time for those who undergo the treatment — among the factors. But the discourse around the topic since Cunningham’s comments has reached a fever pitch, and Miller says she hopes to correct a common narrative. “Transgender women don’t want to destroy women’s sports, because we are women,” Miller said. “We want fairness, and we want that balance between inclusion and fairness. … We don’t want to interrupt things, and we don’t want to be dominating things. We just want to play the game.”